Reconstructing a half-forgotten card driven miniatures campaign

In the late 70s, as one of my various forays in wargames and RPGs, I conceived of a miniatures campaign that would try to evade the problem of epic clashes that make subsequent battles pointless. Mostly I played it with Scott Wisher, but a few of our other friends joined in on occasion, I particularly remember Jim Mzik from Chanute being there for one of the bigger battles involving the evil temple.

Thematically it was a small scale fantasy skirmish campaign. The rules for battle were my man to man fantasy skirmish rules that started from having played a lot of Chainmail and riffed from their towards how I felt the game ought to play. The spell tables were used straight from Chainmail with a few tweaks. Most of the changes were in the movement, morale, and combat rules. I've been sitting on a half done post presenting the rules for some time now, maybe this will be the inspiration I need to complete it. Usually we'd play fairly large battles when playing these rules, maybe 6 to 8 units, mostly of 12 figures, plus some specials on each side. This campaign took it down a notch,  the fights were smaller, some much smaller.

The campaign map was a pencil sketch on a piece of notebook paper, which I may be able to dredge back up along with the rosters. It was an area of mixed temperate forest, open fields and hills, with a couple roads crossing through from one important off map place to another, and a river or two if I remember correctly. Most terrain features were named.

The map was being contested by a variety of small factions, some Lawful and some Evil, with rosters for each faction in each side. All the non-monstrous characters that took more than a single hit were named, as were some of the monsters, and some of the single hit characters.  The factions could be very small, The Wizard in the Wood, with a few servants, creations, and monstrous minions, or a homesteading family with a farm in another clearing, or a small stand of Entwoods with a handful of Ents. The largest that I remember were a Lawful castle with palisaded village and a pretty solid garrison of knights and men at arms and evil temple up on a hill with a dungeon complex beneath it. I drew up some maps for that and another dungeon but I don't think a delve there ever came off as part of the action. The cards were red construction paper that I wrote on with a felt tip pen, all text.

 Campaign events came about mostly through the play of cards, certain cards set things in motion on the map, and when things were moving on the map, each side had both a card play and a map move to make in a turn. I do not remember the details of hand size, draw or discard. It was probably a draw one card system, with option to discard or play. I can see from some of the cards that there was a passage of time recorded, but I don't remember how card play fit in, weekly card play turns would probably make sense.

The deck was designed around the idea that most factions would be very unlikely to fully risk their existence to offensive action, so cards that activated a faction for an attack usually specified a fraction of the group that could be used. But there were a variety cards that created or broke alliances, and added extra forces or weakened a force, so that larger attacks could be organized, or broken up at the political card play level and then once a player felt strong enough, he'd play the card to launch the attack. There were also two levels of attack, Raids which were smaller, and Attacks which were larger and had to be preceded by a declaration of war. The state of war was between individual factions, not whole alignments, but factions on a side could become allied and then could be pulled in by playing the Summon Allies. There were alliance breaking cards and truce cards that would end a state of war, so that getting enough political traction to set up for military success was always difficult, keeping the campaign continuing for awhile. Each card was coded with who could play it L-Lawful, E-Evil, B-Both. As you will see in the cards listed, dungeon expeditions were another form of miniatures play. The plan was roughly to do a simplified D&D like dungeon expedition using the miniatures combat rules if I remember correctly.

The nature of the campaign was such that with the map, rosters, and a bit of a log going, and each side's hand bagged between sessions, we could sit down and play the campaign card game for awhile, often changing sides when we sat down to a new session, and play a fight, maybe two in the evening if the fights were small. Log the losses and save the game away for next time.

One problem I remember with it was that there was a gold economy in the game that could be used with some cards to reinforce groups and build fortifications I think, and pay taxes to off map powers, but the income/outflow was not in balance so we accumulated wealth in some of the stronger factions on the map. Reading some of the cards, the money was in GT, so Gold Talents, and I see a notation GTJ on the adventurers card, which probably meaning Jewelry worth a Gold Talent. ST silver talent, CG common goods, PG precious goods. A talent is between 100 and 1000 coins in D&D, will have to go through all cards to figure out a rate if every trying to tie the two together.

All that said, I came across part of the deck of cards this morning, so I will transcribe them to give more of the flavor of the thing. I think it is about half the deck. I count 50 missing numbers below 96.

Since Reinforcements cards describe a starting offmap location, I think they actually moved onto the map, and could possibly generate combats before arriving at the group they were joining.

Summon Allies is clearly an "instant" that can be played together with a combat initiating card.

The Deck

Ambush E 4
The Orcs of the wild wood may ambush one party ont he High Road with up to 1/3 of their force. Allies may be called, up to 1/4 of each may help if a Summon Allies card is played

Treaty B 8
The High King will invoke peace on all warring armies. Having determined the war to be the fault of Lawful forces, they must pay the Evil ones 10 to 60 GT in tribute. All prisoners must be returned. Ransom of 5 per Hit may be demanded.

Mercenaries B 15
All mercenaries are inducted into royal service and immediately leave for the Great Kingdom.

Invaders E 17
A band of nomad raiders from the Dry Wastes swings down from the N.E> and attacks Demsley.
Nomads: 18 M. Horse, 4 M. Horsebow, 1 3H M. Horse Hero

Weather B 19
Battle prevented by terrible storm.
Either side may withdraw. If neither does, the fight will commence the next day.

Disease B 21
Plague strikes one stronghold. Roll die for each occupant.
1-3 no effect
4-5 ill for one month
6+ killed
If besieged, add one to the die. Presence of Bishop or Patriarch will subtract one from the die.

Famine E 24
Demsley and Bannock's Freehold are struck by a famine. One CG per fighter must be expended for food relief. Any shorted will die. One raid may be attempted by each in order to capture enough food. Up to 1/2 may go.

Quest L 27
One Evil warrior, monster, or leader will be summoned to the City of the Gods to perform an Unholy Quest. After 1 month roll a die.
1-3 slain
4-6 returns with +1 Hit, 3-30 GT and a magic weapon.

Summons E 31
The Lord of Orly Castle and at least 3 retainers must journey to the Great Kingdom to appear at the wedding of one of the High King's sons. Each will return with 1-6 GT and 1-3 PG as guesting gifts.

Undead L 32
The Undead will assist the lawful side in one battle. 1/2 of each type will appear with the Undead Lord, coming in on a 1 or a 2.    (Note: I think this was my version of Aragorn and the Paths of the Dead, the 1 or 2 reference was probably a die roll each turn in the battle, so this card must have been playable once a battle has been started.)

Rebellion B 34
One captured stronghold will rebel against the garrison with one half their original strength but without a leader.

Tribute L 37
must be sent by the evil forces to Sea Spray in the amount of 30 GT. If it is captured by someone en route, more must be sent until one shipment gets through.

Taxes L38
Taxes may be collected by the lord of Orly Castle from tributary territories to the north to the amount of 12 GT, 30 ST, 40 CG, and 10 PG.

Dungeon Expedition L 40
One party may go from any lawful group to the Dark Citadel. This may include 1/4 of its force plus 1/4 of any ally called by the Summon Allies card plus ALL lawful adventurers if any.

Dungeon Expedition L 43
One party may be sent from any lawful force to the Great Stone Mountain. This may consist of 1/3 of its force plus any lawful adventurers.

Dungeon Expedition L 45
Any lawful adventurers may go to either dungeon.

Reinforcements E 47
12 Heavy foot and 2 Evil Vicars come from the City of the Gods to join the troops at the Temple of the Goat.

Reinforcements L 48
6 heavy Foot and 1-6 Adventurers join Demsley or Bannock. They come from Sea Spray. Adventurers:
1 Fighter
2 MU
3 Cleric
4 Elf (1-2 F, 3-4 M, 5-6 T)
5 Dwarf (1-4 F, 5-6 T)
6 Hobbit (1-3 F, 4-6 T)
1-3 Hits each, Each possessed 1-6 GT, 1-3 GTJ and has a 1/3 chance for each hit of having a magic item.

Reinforcements E 49
1-2 8 Goblins and a Bugbear join the Badlands Goblins from the East.
3-4 6 Orcs and an ogre join the orcs in the Wildwood.

and 1-6 adventurers join the Wizard in the Wood. (See card 30 for specs.)

Summon Allies B 51

( Probably most of the missing cards between 50 and 55 are Summon Allies, since I did similar cards in runs.)

Magic! L 56
The Lord of Orly Castle searches his armory and finds the Sword of the Mists. It is +2, does double hits to ogres, and casts spells as a seer. (If the Sword of the Mists has been found already, roll for another magic item.)

Magic! E 57
The Goat God bestows on his High Priest the Staff of Kings. It strikes as a flail +1, finds secret doors and casts spells as a lawful vicar.( If the Staff of Kings is already in play, roll for another magic item.)

Mercenaries E 61
A mercenary company from the City of the Gods heads to the Temple of the Goat for employment at a rate of 20 GT a year plus support.
Mercenaries: 12 Heavy Foot and a 2H heavy horse hero.

Mercenaries L 62
12 mercenary dwarves and a 2H hero dwarf come down to the Last Chance Inn from Seaspray. They will hire on for 6 GT per month plus board.

Mercenaries E 63
A company of 18 mercenary orcs come from Seaspray to the Wizard in the Wood for service at a rate of 20 GT per year plus board.

Caravan B 64
A caravan loaded with 80 CG and 12 PG travels from the City of the Gods to the Great Kingdom.
It will leave 5 CG at each stronghold along the way in payment for services. Its guard force consists of 8 longbowmen, 12 heavy foot, 6 medium horse, and 1 Magician with 8 wagons.
(Note, both are offmap locations, so this is crossing the map.)

Caravan B 66
A caravan loaded with 30 PG and 40 ST is going from Panjud to the City of the Gods. The guards are 6 Elf light horsebow and 6 Elf heavy foot.

Assassin B 69
For 20 GT an assassin can be hired to slay one enemy leader.
On a 1 or 2 he will be successful. A 1 to the roll if the target is a spellcaster. Subtract 1 if the assassin is aided by a spellcaster.

Raid E 70
Raid by Badlands Goblins on Bannock's Freehold to capture Bannock's daughter. Up  to 1/3 of Goblins plus up to 1/4 of card-called allies.

Raid E 71
Raid by the forces of the Wizard in the Wood up target of choice to capture treasure and slaves for experiments. Up to 1/2 of Wizard's force plus up to 1/3 of any allies called by cards.

Raid E 72
Raid by up to 1/3 of any evil force plus up to 1/4 of any card-called allies up any lawful force.

Raid L 73
A raid by up to 1/3 of any lawful force plus up to 1/4 of any card-called allies up any evil force.

Raid L 74
A raid by up to 1/2 of the force at Godseye may be made against the Temple of the Goat to capture the High Priest. Up to 1/3 of an card-called allies may help.

War B 76
Any force may declare war on any opposing force.

Break Alliance B 78
Break one enemy alliance.

Break Alliance B 79
Break all alliances of one enemy force.

Break Alliance B 80
Break all alliances of one enemy force.

Alliance E 82
Any evil force may form an alliance with any other evil force.

Alliance L 86
Any lawful force may form an alliance with any other lawful force.

Attack E 89
Any evil force may attack one lawful force with up to 2/3 its strength plus up to 1/2 of all card-called allied forces, if it has declared war on that force using a War card.

Attack L 92
Any lawful force may attack any evil force with up to 3/4 of its strength plus up to 2/3 of all card-called allies, if war has been declared by one force upon the other by use of a War card.

War B 93
Any force may declare war on any opposing force.

War B 94
Any force may declare war on any opposing force.

War L 95
Any lawful force may declare on any evil force.

War E 96
Any evil force may declare war on any lawful force

Update 2020/09/04

Yesterday, digging into an overloaded shelf, I found the other half of the card deck. Yay! So now I have a hope of making the system playable again. First steps will be to find the folder again and type in the other half of the deck list here. Then try to play some of it.

Color shift in Blogger

Why do some images that have a white background when editing, go bluish or grayish in Blogger?  Is there an easy way to fix it or file format that shows it less? Maybe its the background white I use on the blog that is the problem?

Rune Map

A little mapping experiment I drew the other day. The scanner/printer is on the fritz, so I just took a phone photo and played with brightness and contrast a bit and selected the part I wanted to get a "decent" image. Might do something like this for some player handout maps.

Stone Shelters

There's this curious book I got a couple years ago. "Stone Shelters" by Edward Allen, MIT Press. Not me, he was writing it in the 60s when I was just a kid. Looking the book up, I find he was pretty prolific in architectural books. My copy is old and used, a '74 printing,  but I see copies available on Amazon.

Anyway, this other Edward Allen went to southern Italy on a Fulbright in the '60s and studied, photographed, and sketched trullo houses and cave dwellings that stayed in use well into historical times. A trullo is a house built around sort of a beehive dome of unmortared stone blocks. The combination of photos and plans of trulli here are appealing for modeling buildings or doing RPG maps. The cave dwelling maps he provides are fascinating to show the patterns in which cave dwelling people actually carved out caves into homes instead of a gamer's guess. Google image search turns up only one bad scan of his floor plan as part of an architectural essay.

It's worth picking up on Amazon.

A GM notebook project

These are notes on a project I am considering doing, thinking out loud as it were.  Feel free to chime in with comments.

Way back in the 80s I ran my D&D campaign for awhile largely on a set of HyperCard stacks that I developed. The core of it was maps, sometimes tiled across multiple cards, with locations linked to a key database, usually with a snippet of a dungeon map showing the room and the page of text about its description. The world map was a big, linked set of cards that had links at marked locations that drilled down into dungeon maps, castle maps, and city maps, plus a panel of various DM aid buttons that went to stacks for character sheets, die rollers, sound effects players, treasure and overland encounter generators, etc.

Out of all of that the part I'd like to rebuild now out of HTML and Javascript is a convenient way to upload a map file, find it again, and cover it with an image map where I make rects or polygons that bring up an editable popup location key. It has to be really convenient or I won't bother using it.  All the pieces exist to one degree or another elsewhere. It ought to be convenient both at a computer or on a tablet, and be minimalist and focused. There should be two kinds of links, key popups and links to other maps, along with some sort of tree structured navigation map index. It's worth considering whether having a view on all the key entries separately is enough of a good thing to implement. I might do without it.  But it might make importing maps easier if a text file could be uploaded with a key along with the map, and parts of it matched up with locations on the map.

Coffeetime is over, gotta go, later....

The Nameless Dungeon

I don't have a good name for this map yet. But I think I'll flesh it out as an adventure, so it will have one by the time I'm done.

Dunport

Experimenting with a new pen - Micron 005 for the details, trusty Staedtler 0.5 for heavier lines, and paper - Strathmore 400 Series drawing.

Medieval pet names

This article on medieval pet names might be useful for fantasy or historical RPGs. http://www.medievalists.net/2013/06/23/medieval-pet-names/

A villainous creature for Barbarians of Lemuria

The Zaqqun
A quivering mass of translucent motile plasm from which emerge groping pseudopodia, it appears to be a typical blob monster. But unlike most blobs, this one is very intelligent, and will act with deliberation and stratagem. Being smart it will retreat if appropriate, plan and scavenge to grow and plot vengeance. It can stealthily ooze through a crack of 1/2 or less width, taking a few minutes to do so. It's not so much a simple monster as an oozing villain.

Attrributes
Strength 6
Agility 0
Mind 4

Career - intelligent blob monster 2
All languages of characters absorbed until their bonus LB is gone are known, and careers at original level -2. It can form sensory parts at will. It can emphasize any one sense at a time, taking about a round to reconfigure, the optimized sense being nearly as good as an animal that specializes in it - smell like a dog with a bit of a cold, see like a slightly nearsighted raptor, hear like a slightly deaf bat, pick one. It can form vocal apparatus at will and sound like an eerily altered version of the person whose memory and vocal shape it is borrowing.

Combat Abilities
Strike with a pseudopod 1d6 acidic attack. Half of all damage absorbed by armor degrades the armor, roll off fractions (1-3 round down, 4-6 round up). Mighty success does both maximum damage and gives an ongoing +2 to hit that target as it begins to engulf, contact broken on a subsequent miss.

Defense 2
Protection d4-1 (half degrades weapon damage permanently by acidic damage, as above for pseudopod strike, but reducing the values of the weapon that hit it, instead of the armor it hit).

Lifeblood 16 + 1 per 50 pounds of flesh it digests, digests a +1 per round in contact with a dead or helpless target (takes 3-5 rounds after a kill to engulf and digest an adult male human target, bonus lasts for a day, if quiescent bonus degrades much more slowly, up to 20x, giving an opportunity to grow huge if it engulfs a lot of creatures).

Movement - it can ooze along at up to about 4 mph, faster than a walk, much slower than a run, but maintaining that pace will burn through 1 LB per hour.

If resting to slow its metabolism to not burn through absorbed lifeblood, it will take a full round after it is aware of enemies to rouse enough to action, and then act at -2 for a round.

It is vulnerable to fire. Plunging a typical torch into it will do it 1d4 of damage on a successful hit, extinguishing the torch. It is particularly vulnerable to alchemical bases, a few ounces of soda ash or ammonia will do it 1d6. Hunters, magicians, alchemists, and scholars might know this (knowledge test on the career, possible retest if there is time and a library to research it) and alchemists are likely to have enough for 1d3 attacks if they have their typical travelling supplies on them (resource test against alchemy career if necessary to determine randomly). Obviously, it will look out for alchemists and flee from prepared ones or fire bearing mobs.

Acidic damage to armor and weapons can develop slowly, mention the sizzle or blackening at first but only inflict the weakening effect after another round or so if you want it to feel a bit more real.

Using The Last Day of Ragnarok adventure generator with Barbarians of Lemuria

+Kenneth Hite wrote one of my favorite game settings, The Day After Ragnarok. I have the Savage Worlds version. I particularly like the random scenario generator, probably the best of its sort I've come across. I've used it a couple times with minor tweaks in other settings.I intend to make an example here of using it to set up a scenario for Barbarians of Lemuria. I'll dice my way through and discuss how I use and tweak the results.

Before starting, I want to mention that the random city generator is also quite good.

Our hook is 10 on D12 - Old Friend

The second table, location, is maybe the one to fiddle with the most. The result "City" is 1 out of 12, which feels a bit low to me for a lot of settings. That can be glossed over by several of the other results having an option to include cities, e.g. "Exotic Land", or possibly be included in cities, e.g. "Mansion". Or just set it in a city if that feels appropriate to where you last left the characters and where they were headed. No need to be a slave to the dice.

Anyway our location roll is 5, a Mansion. Given the more ancient theming of Swords and Sorcery, I'll probably take that to be a Palace instead.

Heroes' Goal - 3, Discover or solve a mystery, will have to see more of the results to figure out what sort of mystery fits.

Villain 6 Cultist, in The Day after Ragnarok, a servant of the Serpent. Well, serpent gods are almost de riguer in S&S so we can still go with a serpent cult just fine.

Villain's Goal 2 Destroy - The serpent priest is out to destroy somebody or something, what a surprise...

Henchmen - this table can get multiple rolls, as many as you feel fleshes out the scenario right. So let's go with three rolls.
6 - Igor, a long suffering, probably deformed, personal servant of the villain,
8 - Operative, an agent of some sort, in this case probably a palace official secretly working for the cult.
12 - Warlock, a magic specialist, a Sorceror in our case, but one subordinate to the High Priest of the Serpent God. This one and maybe the operative should have loyalty checks rolled to see how likely personal ambition for leadership of the cult or other advancement might conflict with the villain's plans.

Since all three are singletons, we might throw in a few thugs or turned palace soldiers for a rabble encounter with minions at some point. Or snakes, possibly an avatar of the snake god, or other creatures summoned by the sorceror?  Loyal guards that would oppose the villain would also be a possibility.  I've just realized that I have already be casting the villain as an outsider worming his way into the palace. While "Villain's Lair" was a different result, it could be that the story works out better with the villain in more or less control of the palace at the start.

Victim - 2, that most stereotypical victim is rolled, the Damsel in Distress, and in S & S usually some degree of undress as well. Is she of low rank or high? If the villain's goal is to destroy her, that would make her someone significant standing in his way to power, perhaps the Queen, or a rival like the new Priestess of the Sun God, newly in office since the sudden demise of her predecessor. Or she's the sacrifice by which he'll gain use of the Serpent God's power to destroy something grander, the palace, city, kingdom, something else? Or a destruction of the country and she's the victim because she's queen? Smaller scale, destruction of the rival Sun Cult's power if she's the High Priestess.

Guest Star - 10 Official or Bureaucrat. Perfect, that totally fits and can be used in the story in various ways. Would probably have some palace official scene anyway.

Guest star's goal - roll once on Hero Goal and once on Villain Goal and pick, 7 - Money/Reward  or 2 - Destroy, so we can have a greedy vizier or one that has long been a rival of the Snake Cult and wants to see it destroyed. Or does this official want somebody or something else destroyed that complicates things?

Obstacle - 3 Chimaera - a partially human or transformed human monster. Okay, a serpentman or a naga or some sort of partially snake-like monster seems to fit here.

Twist - 1 Ally in trouble (or innocents in peril) - Either through the heroes' actions, villain's machinations, or coincidence, there is a conflicting need to save somebody that complicates the heroes' ability to achieve their goal. Can they do both or do they have to sacrifice one to succeed in the other?

This is shaping up pretty clearly, but the final cohesive writeup will have to be continued...